


Beneath the Skin

by wisdomofme



Series: FT Angst Week 2015 [2]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M, FTAngstWeek, FTAngstWeek2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 11:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3849538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomofme/pseuds/wisdomofme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt 1 of FT Angst Week: Scars<br/>Everyone had their scars, but the worst ones were never visible and they always stayed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath the Skin

Two days had passed since the final match of the Grand Magic Games. Which, to Lucy, meant that it’d been two days since the return of her best friend.

Well, kind of.

A campfire crackled in front of her, sending embers drifting off into the humid night air. Just yesterday Natsu had yanked her from the safe, stable life she had rebuilt in his absence and, if she were being totally honest, he had saved her again.

But, had he?

Lucy gnawed on her bottom lip as her hands paused in pulling her hair into a bun. The warm weather was beginning to get to her and she really needed that hair off the back of her neck. Anyway, where was she?

Oh, that right. Just in the middle of wondering if the Natsu she got back was the same one that left her. Lucy groan and buried her face in her hands. Thank goodness she was alone, she imagined that Natsu and Happy would be giving her some weird looks by now if they hadn’t gone to a nearby river to cool off.

But she was beginning to wish that she had decided to join them instead of being here, alone with only her thoughts for company.

It wasn’t that Natsu had obviously changed, aside from the newfound strength in his magic and the beefy arms Lucy felt warm just thinking about. It was more subtle then that. It was like he had found a purpose, aside from bringing his friends back together. Like he now understood something about himself that he hadn’t known before. He seemed almost, dare she say it-

But Lucy just sighed and waved the idea off. She was surely overthinking things. Natsu could never act mature, and he still definitely wasn’t! Not after making her flee from an army of guards.

Ugh, he made her leave all of her stuff behind!

Plus anyone would change in a year, even she had. Although it felt less like she had changed and more like she had been-

“Yo, Luce!”

Her head sprung up from where it had been resting on her knees and her mind was jolted from her thoughts as Natsu and Happy approached. Natsu was shirtless, as he all too often was, with only his bandage covering is right arm and his signature scarf slung over his shoulder. Sometimes Lucy wished her partner wasn’t so attractive.

“Lucy!” Happy cried as he hovered above Natsu’s shoulder. “The river was great, even though there were no fish. You should go take a bath too!”

Lucy scowled and narrowed her eyes at the pesky exceed. “Are you saying that I smell, cat?”

Happy snickered and hid behind Natsu’s shoulder. “You said it, not me.”

Lucy inhaled, ready to give that damn blue cat a piece of her mind, when she was distracted by a chuckle.

A deep chuckle.

“Don’t be mean, Happy, Lucy smells fine,” Natsu tilted his head and sniffed and Lucy jumped as she realized that he was smelling _her_. “Like pine trees and the forest after the rain,” he grinned. “Nice.”

Lucy stared at her folded hand in her lap as her cheeks flushed a deep red. Natsu flopped down on the other side of the campfire, ignoring Happy as he snickered behind his paw before landing beside him.

“He liiiikes her.”

“But seriously, the water was great! You should’ve come,” he spoke over the sound of rustling as he dropped his scarf next to him and began to dig through his bag.

With his focus elsewhere Lucy figured that it’d be safe to look up. “Maybe I will in a bit…”

And then her eyes landed on his back.

All of her breath left her lungs as the sight came into focus and her hand instinctively went to reach out to him before she yanked it back to her chest. With his sharp dragon-like hearing picking up her gasp, Natsu turned around to look at her with a worried expression.

And shirtless.

“Luce”-

“Where did you get those scars?!”

Natsu’s face instantly relaxed before scrunching up in confusion. He twisted his neck in an attempt to see what Lucy was so panicked about and recognition immediately flooded his eyes.

“Oh, those scars? I don’t know, they’re pretty old…” Natsu mumbled as he scratched at his chin thoughtfully.

After a moment he shrugged and turned back to his bag as his hands finally fumbled upon what he’d been searching for. Happy cheered as Natsu tossed him a fish before he began to munch on it contently.

It was fine that Natsu was so nonchalant about this issue, but Lucy knew exactly how old those scars were.

Less than a year.

Lucy had seen Natsu shirtless plenty of times, maybe a few more times then was deemed appropriate for friends, but those scars had never been there before.

“You got those while you were gone, didn’t you?”

Natsu turned and stared into her eyes from across the fire, a rare kind of curiosity shining in his own.

“Some of them,” he said finally as he pulled a shirt from his bag and pulled it over his head.

“Some of them?” Lucy repeated with obvious interest.

“Natsu sighed and paused with only his head through the hole.

“You see this one?” he asked as he twisted his back towards her and awkwardly twisted his arm to point at a scar on his lower back which trailed diagonally down to his side. “I go this one from a boar that ambushed Happy and I while we were fishing.”

“Aye!” Happy added, pausing from his treat for a brief moment. “It was huge, with glowy red eyes! But Natsu couldn’t smell it cause he was complaining about the fishy stink!”

Happy grinned at Natsu like they shared a secret and Lucy realized that they did. An entire year worth of secrets.

“Yeah, we got pretty relaxed out there, didn’t we bub?” Natsu asked and Happy hummed in reply but was already too focused on his meal to offer any more commentary.

Lucy laughed lightly into her palm at the two of them before scanning Natsu’s back again, desperate for more stories.

“What about the one on the back of your right shoulder?” she asked, pointing to a splotchy sort of discoloured spot on his back.

“You mean this one?” he asked as he looked at her over his shoulder and tapped his hand around the area she had indicated. “Oh, that’s from when we saw Gildarts!”

“You saw Gildarts?!” Lucy cried in surprise. “What was he doing?!”

Natsu scrunched up his face as he attempted to think back. “Well, he said he was in the middle of a 10 year job, but we travelled with him for about a week and he didn’t seem like he was in much of a rush or anything,” Natsu fully turned back to Lucy as his excitement got the better of him. “It was great actually! We got to hang out and train with him for a while! That’s where I got the scar. We were fighting and he sent me flying into a buncha rocks and I landed a little funny and got that.”

He finished by tapping his shoulder with a proud grin and leaning back onto his arms, his shirt still hanging ridiculously around his neck. Lucy could only smile at his Natsu-ness and get up to toss a few more pieces of firewood onto the campfire.

“It sounds like you guys had a lot of fun,” she said with a fond lilt creeping into her voice.

“Yeah,” Natsu hummed as the fire flared up from the added wood and he finally finished pulling his shirt on properly before wrapping his scarf around his neck. “But not as much fun as when we’re with you.”

Lucy hesitated for a moment as she pushed the _‘why’_ that had built up in her chest back down. Now wasn’t the time.

Instead she sat back down, next to Natsu and the now napping Happy, and pointed to the only visible scar left, one that’d normally be covered by his single sleeve.

“What about that one?”

And, as the words left her lips, she watched a light flicker and die in his eyes at the same time.

Natsu licked his lips and brushed his hand under his nose as he attempted to build up the strength to speak.

“It’s from when I was fighting Mard Geer,” he murmured in a soft voice. “When Igneel died.”

That was when Lucy finally saw Natsu’s real scars. Not the ones he displayed on his skin and boasted about, the ones that had torn and ripped at his soul. That had healed slowly over time, but would never truly be the same again.

But she had those too.

Taking a short breath to allow herself a moment to dredge up her confidence and to double check that the cat was still asleep, Lucy gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled.

She could’ve laughed at the mixture of fear and confusion that crossed Natsu’s face but, instead, she granted him a small mercy and stopped just so the folded material of her shirt still covered her breasts.

“See this,” she said as one of her fingers traced a puckered line that ran beneath her right breast. “I got it when we were fighting Tartarus, when all of you were stuck in the walls.”

Lucy’s eyes closed as she remembered that last look of desperation on Natsu’s face as he had lunged for her, their finger separated only by millimetres.

But her eyes shot open again as she felt another, warmer hand trace her scar.

Natsu, with his hand spread above her waist and his thumb following the pink line, stared at her with dark hooded eyes that made her heart skip a beat.

Was this really the same Natsu Dragneel she once knew?

“I’m sorry,” his voice was thick and heavy as he stared into her wide eyes. “I should’ve been there, I should’ve been able to save you.”

Lucy felt the curve of her mouth soften and her heart swell with affection for this man.

“You did all you could,” she reassured him, releasing her shirt and picking his hands up in her own. “And you can’t save me all the time.”

Her lips pursed as she remembered the hot tears on her cheeks and the shattered remains of her beloved key slicing into the skin of her clenched fists.

“But I want to,” Natsu interrupted her thoughts as his hands tightened around hers. “I want to be there for you, _always_ ”-

“Natsu.”

Lucy pulled her hands from his grasp and stood. She brushed the dirt from the back of her skirt and avoided making eye contacted with the boy that had abandoned her for an entire year.

“I think it’s time we went to sleep.”

Natsu swallowed and nodded slowly, suffering whiplash from the new barriers that surrounded this Lucy.

“Yeah,” he mumbled as Lucy chucked one last log on the fire for the night.

Then she circled to the other side of the campfire and laid down on her sleeping bag.

“G’night Luce,” Natsu said as he stared at her back through the fire and mourned the new distance between them.

“Good night Natsu, see you in the morning,” Lucy replied, her back solid and unmoving.

“Yeah, see you.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she pulled the edge of the sleeping bag to her lips.

It looked like their scars affected them both.


End file.
